If Mrs. Boxall had had her way with Widdles, he would have turned out a resplendent bird in spite of fate. But if you had told her not to be distressed at his nakedness, for God cared for Widdles, not as much, but as well as for her, she would have judged you guilty of something like blasphemy. Was it because the bird was comical, as even she admitted, that you must not speak of God's care in relation to him? Certainly, however, he sowed not neither did he reap; and as for a barn to store his winter-grain in—poor Widdles! Yet, was he forgotten? Mrs. Boxall was the last person who could say so, with her sugar, her nuts, her unguents of price—though the latter, clearly a striving against Providence, were not of so much account in the eyes of the bird. I dare say he found them soothing, though.
However all these things may have been, one thing is certain, that Mrs. Boxall began to recover her equanimity, and at length even her benevolence toward men in general—with one class exception, that of lawyers, and two individual exceptions, those of old Worboise and young Worboise. I believe she had a vague conviction that it was one of the malignant class above mentioned that had plucked Widdles. "Ah, my poor Widdles! Them lawyers!" she would say. "You would have been a very different person indeed, Widdles, if it hadn't been for them. But it'll be all the same in a hundred years, Widdles. Keep up heart, old bird. It'll all be over soon. If you die before me, I'll put you on a winding-sheet that'll be a deal more comfortable than dead feathers, and I'll bury you with my own hands. But what'll you do for me, if I die first, you little scarecrow? You'll look about for me, won't you? That's about all you can do. And you'll miss the bits of sugar. Mattie, my dear, mind that Widdles has his sugar, and everything regular after I'm dead and gone."
She began to take to Mattie again, and even to make her read to her of a Sunday. But this, as of old, gave rise to much difference of opinion between them, which, however, resulted in the old woman's learning something from the child, if not in the immediate case, yet in the next similar case. For it often happens that a man who has opposed another's opinion bitterly in regard to the individual case that occasioned the difference, will act entirely according to that others judgment in the next precisely similar case that occurs; although if you were to return to the former, he would take up his former position with an access of obstinacy in the reaction from having yielded to argument. Something like this took place between Grannie and Mattie. It was amusing to hear now the former would attribute all the oddities of the latter to the fact that she belonged to the rising generation, never seeming to suspect that Mattie was an exception to children in general, as peculiar as Widdles in relation to birds.
CHAPTER LIV.
GRANNIE APPEALS TO WIDDLES.
One sultry evening in summer, Lucy was seated at her piano, which had its place in Mr. Kitely's back parlor, near the black oak cabinet, but she was not playing. She had just been singing a little song from some unknown pen, which she had found with music of her father's in the manuscripts he had left her. This was the song:
1.
Sunshine fair,
In the air,
On the earth!
Everywhere
Waking mirth!
Stay not there.
I sit apart
By the hearth
Of my heart
In the dark.
Dost thou mark
How I sit
In the dark,
With my grief,
Nursing it?
Bring relief,
Sunny gold!
Look, I set
Open door
Thee before,
And the fold
Of my curtain draw aside.
Enter, enter, golden tide.
2.